Biron. Necessity will make us all forsworn Three thousand times within this three years' space: For every man with his affects is born; Not by might master'd, but by special grace:" So to the laws at large I write my name: [Subscribes. And he, that breaks them in the least degree, Suggestions1 are to others, as to me; King. Ay, that there is; our court, you know, is haunted With a refined traveller of Spain; A man in all the world's new fashion planted, 9 Not by might master'd, but by special grace:] Biron, amidst his extravagancies, speaks with great justness against the folly of Vows. They are made without sufficient regard to the variations of life, and are therefore broken by some unforeseen necessity. They proceed commonly from a presumptuous confidence, and a false estimate of human power. Johnson. 1 Suggestions-] Temptations. So, in King Henry IV, P. I: Johnson. "And these led on by your suggestion." Steevens. - quick recreation —] Lively sport, spritely diversion. the quick comedians 66 Extemporally will stage us." Steevens. 3 A man of complements, whom right and wrong Johnson. Have chose as umpire of their mutiny:] As very bad a play as this is, it was certainly Shakspeare's, as appears by many fine master-strokes scattered up and down. An excessive complaisance is here admirably painted, in the person of one who was willing to make even right and wrong friends; and to persuade the one to recede from the accustomed stubbornness of her nature, and wink at the liberties of her opposite, rather than he would incur the imputation of ill-breeding in keeping up the quarrel. And This child of fancy, that Armado hight," For interim to our studies, shall relate, as our author, and Jonson his contemporary, are confessedly the two greatest writers in the drama that our nation could ever boast of, this may be no improper occasion to take notice of one material difference between Shakspeare's worst plays and the other's. Our author owed all to his prodigious natural genius; and Jonson most to his acquired parts and learning. This, if attended to, will explain the difference we speak of: which is this, that, in Jonson's bad pieces, we do not discover the least traces of the author of the Fox and Alchemist; but in the wildest and most extravagant notes of Shakspeare, you every now and then encounter strains that recognize their divine composer. And the reason is this, that Jonson owing his chief excellence to art, by which he sometimes strained himself to an uncommon pitch, when he unbent himself, had nothing to support him, but fell below all likeness of himself; while Shakspeare, indebted more largely to nature, than the other to his acquired talents, could never, in his most negligent hours, so totally divest himself of his genius, but that it would frequently break out with amazing force and splendour. Warburton. This passage, I believe, means no more than that Don Armado was a man nicely versed in ceremonial distinctions; one who could distinguish in the most delicate questions of honour, the exact boundaries of right and wrong. Compliment, in Shakspeare's time, did not signify, at least did not only signify verbal civility, or phrases of courtesy, but, according to its original meaning, the trappings, or ornamental appendages of a character, in the same manner, and on the same principles of speech with accomplishment. Complement is, as Armado well expresses it, the varnish of a complete man. Johnson. Dr. Johnson's opinion may be supported by the following passage in Lingua, or The Combat of the Tongue and the Five Senses for Superiority, 1607:-" after all fashions and of all colours, with rings, jewels, a fan, and in every other place, odd complements.' And again, by the title-page to Richard Braithwaite's English Gentlewoman: "drawne out to the full body, expressing what habiliments doe best attire her: what ornaments doe best adorne her; and what complements doe best accomplish her." Again, in p. 59, we are told that "complement hath beene anciently defined, and so successively retained;-a no lesse reall than formall accomplishment." 4 This child of fancy,] This fantastick. The expression, in another sense, has been adopted by Milton in his L'Allegro: "Or sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child -" Malone, That Armado hight,] Who is called Armado. Malone. How you delight, my lords, I know not, I; 8 } Biron. Armado is a most illustrious wight, A man of fire-new words, fashion's own knight. Long. Costard the swain, and he, shall be our sport; And, so to study, three years is but short. Enter DULL, with a letter, and COSTARD. Dull. Which is the duke's own person? 6 From tawny Spain, lost in the world's debate.] i. e. he shall relate to us the celebrated stories recorded in the old romances, and in their very style. Why he says, from tawny Spain, is, because those romances, being of Spanish original, the heroes and the scene were generally of that country. Why he says, lost in the world's debate, is, because the subject of those romances were the crusades of the European Christians against the Saracens of Asia and Africa. Warburton. I have suffered this note to hold its place, though Mr. Tyrwhitt has shewn that it is wholly unfounded, because Dr. Warburton refers to it in his dissertation at the end of this play. Malone. in the world's debate.] The world seems to be used in a monastick sense by the king, now devoted for a time to a monastick life. In the world, in seculo, in the bustle of human affairs, from which we are now happily sequestered, in the world, to which the votaries of solitude have no relation. Johnson. Warburton's interpretation is clearly preferable to that of Johnson. The king had not yet so weaned himself from the world, as to adopt the language of a cloister. M. Mason. And I will use him for my minstrelsy.] i. e. I will make a minstrel of him, whose occupation was to relate fabulous stories. Douce. 8 fire-new words,] "i. e. (says an intelligent writer in the Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1786,) words newly coined, new from the forge. Fire-new, new off the irons, and the Scottish expression bren-new, have all the same origin.” The same compound epithet occurs in King Richard III: "Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current." Steevens. • Which is the duke's own person?] The king of Navarre in several passages, through all the copies, is called the duke: but as this must have sprung rather from the inadvertence of the editors than a forgetfulness in the poet, I have every where, to avoid Theobald. confusion, restored king to the text. The princess in the next act calls the king-"this virtuous duke," a word which, in our author's time, seems to have been used with great laxity. And indeed, though this were not the Biron. This, fellow; What would'st? Dull. I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his grace's tharborough:1 but I would see his own person in flesh and blood. Biron. This is he. Dull. Signior Arme-Arme-commends you. There's villainy abroad; this letter will tell you more. Cost. Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me. King. A letter from the magnificent Armado. Biron. How low soever the matter, I hope in God for high words. Long. A high hope for a low having:2 God grant us patience! Biron. To hear? or forbear hearing? 3 Long. To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately; or to forbear both. Biron. Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb in the merriness. case, such a fellow as Costard may well be supposed ignorant of his true title. Malone. I have followed the old copies. Steevens. 1 tharborough:] i. e. Thirdborough, a peace officer, alike in authority with a headborough or a constable. Sir J. Hawkins. 2 A high hope for a low having:] In old editions: "A high hope for a low heaven,” A low heaven, sure, is a very intricate matter to conceive. I dare warrant, I have retrieved the poet's true reading; and the meaning is this: " Though you hope for high words, and should have them, it will be but a low acquisition at best." This our poet calls a low having; and it is a substantive which he uses in several other passages. Theobald. It is so employed in Macbeth, Act I: great prediction "Of noble having, and of royal hope." Heaven, however, may be the true reading, in allusion to the gradations of happiness promised by Mohammed to his followers. So, in the comedy of Old Fortunatus, 1600: "Oh, how my soul is rapt to a third heaven!" Steevens, 3 To hear? or forbear hearing?] One of the modern editors plausibly enough, reads: "To hear? or forbear laughing?" Malone. as the style shall give us cause to climb-] A quibble between the stile that must be climbed to pass from one field to another, and style, the term expressive of manner of writing in regard to language. Steevens. Cost. The matter is to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta. The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner.5 Biron. In what manner? Cost. In manner and form following, sir; all those three: I was seen with her in the manor house, sitting with her upon the form, and taken following her into the park; which put together, is, in manner and form following. Now, sir, for the manner, it is the manner of a man to speak to a woman: for the form,—in some form. Biron. For the following, sir? Cost. As it shall follow in my correction; And God defend the right! King. Will you hear this letter with attention? Biron. As we would hear an oracle. Cost. Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh. King. [Reads.] Great deputy, the welkin's vicegerent, and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul's earth's God, and body's fostering patron, Cost. Not a word of Costard yet. King. So it is,— Cost. It may be so: but if he say it is so, he is, in telling true, but so, sọ. King. Peace. Cost. -be to me, and every man that dares not fight! King. No words. Cost. of other men's secrets, I beseech you. King. So it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physick of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About 5 taken with the manner.] i. e. in the fact. So, in Heywood's Rape of Lucrece, 1630: " and, being taken with the manner, had nothing to say for himself." Steevens. A forensick term. A thief is said to be taken with the manner, i. e, mainour or manour, (for so it is written in our old law. books,) when he is apprehended with the thing stolen in his possession. The thing that he has taken was called mainour, from the Fr. manier, manu tractare. Malone. 6 but so, so.] The second so was added by Sir T. Hanmer, and adopted by the subsequent editors. Malone. |